Word: gorbachevized
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...Gorbachev is blamed for the crisis in the economy. But the Soviet system for providing its citizens with the basics of life has always been a cruel and hopeless mess. Perestroika has been largely a matter of restructuring a ruin, a contradiction in terms that makes for a sorry spectacle. Yet the world is, as never before, invited to watch. Glasnost has led to a kind of reverse, and perverse, Potemkinism, a post-Soviet tendency to portray the situation as even worse than...
Russians have said there are really only two words in their language: ura (hurrah) and uvy (alas). After generations of being forced to cheer, 286 million people now seem to be lamenting in unison. What's more, they are | booing the man who empowered them to do so. Gorbachev may deserve criticism for having not yet abolished the State Planning Commission, and numerous central ministries are still obstructing reform. But he has unquestionably dismantled the Ministry of Fear. For that he gets astonishingly little thanks...
Beyond the specific complaints against Gorbachev, there is a deeper grievance. Because of both the position and the convictions he holds, he is identified with the very idea of a Soviet Union that stretches from Tallinn on the Baltic to Vladivostok on the Pacific. That idea is finished. The U.S.S.R. was kept together by force; it now has the freedom to come apart...
Even those few of Gorbachev's countrymen who have a kind word for him usually qualify it with some comment to the effect that he is yesterday's man. As usual, they exaggerate. But even if Gorbachev is, before our eyes, passing into history, he can be consoled by the company he will keep...
...will Estonia, Latvia, Georgia and the rest. But even if Gorbachev, like Bolivar, fails as a unifier, he too will be remembered above all as a liberator...